1942: Joint Strike

August 30,2008 -

Backbone Entertainment has released another Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network game with 1942: Joint Strike (in June, Wolf of the Battlefield: Commando 3 was put out). The game is a little tricky to judge at first, but after playing through all the modes, 1942 turns out to be a solid enough title but not nearly worth the heavy price tag.

1942 is technically a 2D shooter but has a nice 3D twist to it. Right off the bat, the game looks pretty and it is easy to pick up. Because your normal fire can be charged to form a noticeably more powerful shot, it isn’t possible to fire with the other analog stick. Fortunately, it isn’t the biggest deal. You can fire your Joint Strike attack with one of two buttons and set off bombs with another.

What’s this Joint Strike, you ask? Simply put, it’s a special attack during co-operative play that actually works out pretty well. Going into a local or online multiplayer match, you choose one of three attacks. Players don’t necessarily need to choose the same attack; it actually doesn’t make that big of a difference, power-wise. They look and work really damn cool, though. When both players hold down the Joint Strike button, you can move around the map to tear apart enemies.

Even if you don’t use the Joint Strike too often, you should still have plenty of fun with the multiplayer. The action is stepped up and there is just something more to it all. However, it seems to simple to pay all that money for, especially when you get into the single player modes.

Playing solo provides a minimal amount of fun. There is nothing really exciting. Most of the time, you feel like you’re going through the motions or being frustrated by not being bale to move fast enough. It’s somewhat mind numbing to a certain extent.

Visually, the game is pretty solid. The 3D aspects really help the game. Everything is polished to the right degree and smoothed out perfectly. The sound is exceptional, but nothing really stands out.

1942’s multiplayer works well. We already mentioned that the game is much more enjoyable with another person, so there’s no need to repeat ourselves. During our playthroughs, we never experienced any lag. It also didn’t take long to join a match. However, our only gripe would have to be the quitting options. If you lose all your lives before your partner does, there should be an option to quit out. It becomes dull to sit there and watch. At least at a real arcade you can walk away in shame. Or enter more quarters.

There isn’t really too much else to say about the game. If it weren’t for the highly enjoyable multiplayer, we would have to rate this with a “Skip It.” But it really isn’t all that bad. Check out the demo of the game beforehand.

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